Monthly Archive for December, 2006

Dec26th2006

Merry Christmas to you!

Published
by
avr
1 year, 8 months ago
in Personal Updates
. Closed

 Hi there! We hope you have had a very Merry Christmas! We spent the last couple of days with our American teammates. We actually laughed a ton - which was really refreshing!

We went to our Anglican church on the morning of Christmas Eve. As I have mentioned before, there are always memorable things happening at our church…the kids acted out the Christmas story from the bible. However, there were able to make some "revisions" to the story….Mary was a student nurse. Joseph was an airplane mechanic. They were heading to Bethlehem in their Porshe, went they were stopped by the American FBI for their driver’s licenses. Since they didn’t have them, their Porshe was confiscated and they had to trave by mopeds. (They actually had little scooters up front with them!) The shepherds were "punk shepherds" who had their hair done up all crazy. The 3 Wise Men were George Bush, the president of France, and of course, the German Chancellor - who is a woman. It was sooooooo hillarious! I took a few pictures to capture our Christmas experience in Europe on film! We’ll post them soon!

We did a small gift exchange with our team here. We also bought some stocking stuffers for each other. To my complete surprise (and sheer joy!) I received the complete 2nd season of The Cosby Show on dvd!!!!! I was thrilled to say the least! AVR got some very special notebooks (he loves to keep everything organized!) that he had hoped for and even an I-Tunes gift card!

We read the Christmas story from the bible - we all took different parts, like a little play. We had a friend from Indonesia and a friend from Mexico with us as well, so it was cool to hear the story with different accents. (Amazing to think that God isn’t American and He doesn’t just speak English! :) ) AVR also played John Piper’s "The Innkeeper" on his computer for all of us to hear. It is a very moving poem. Email AVR if you want more info about it. We sang Christmas carols - acapella, of course :) We had a special time remembering the true meaning of Christmas. Immanuel - God is with us!

And, my ramblings wouldn’t be complete without mentioning how our hearts are doing….while we did laugh a lot, we were also sad. We miss home. We miss our families and our friends. We miss America. We were at our friends’ house til really late, so we didn’t get to call people back in the States that we had hoped to talk with. I did get to talk with my dad briefly, and AVR did get to talk with his parents for awhile on Christmas Eve. But, I had also hoped to talk with AVR’s family, and Tari and Jim, and some friends….and it didn’t happen. At about 2am last night, AVR said "I’m sad." He doesn’t often express thoughts like that out loud. So, I knew he really meant it….So, yes, we have laughed a lot, but we’re also sad….just wanted you to know.

We will be leaving tomorrow morning for a German Campus Fur Christus conference. There will be around 80 people there. (In Indianapolis, there will be about 2,500 people! That’s just students from 4 states! This is the whole country of Germany - that’s why we are missionaries here right now!) AVR will be leading worship with some other people from our team. He is also leading a seminar about ministry philosophy. I know he’s gonna do a great job!

Guess what I’ll be doing? Cooking ALL the meals for the conference! 5 American girls (including me) are cooking all the food…..promises to me a good time had by all! I pretty much hate German food, can’t wait to cook up vieners for everyone….yummy! Please pray for the conference….please pray that all of our hearts are open to what God wants to do in our lives.

Please pray that we meet with Him (even though we won’t "understand" most of what is said in German!).

Please pray that we’ll be able to communicate well with Germans, in spite of the language barriers.

Please pray that German students will love Jesus more deeply and will experience the full life that He promises!

Thank you for caring about us. We are so thankful that you want to know what’s going on with us! And, we’re sometimes slow to get back with emails, but we always love to hear how people are doing! And, phone messages are ALWAYS fun to hear! You can leave one at 309. Bye for now!

 

Dec18th2006

Ho! Ho! Ho!!!!

Published
by
avr
1 year, 8 months ago
in Personal Updates
. Closed

Check out our video! My husband is sooooo smart that he can even put movies on our webpage! Look for more coming soon - we can take you on a virtual tour of our house!

We’ve been preparing a bit for Christmas. We love our little tree! It was only 5 Euro - which is quite a bargain!!!! We received two very special ornaments from Alan and Janel (our brother and sister-in-law) in the mail last week. One of them is a special “2nd Anniversary” ornament. It’s sooooo sweet!

We celebrated our 2nd anniversary on Monday. We had a nice evening in Freiburg. In some ways, 2 years doesn’t seem like a very long time, and in some ways it does. I am so thankful to be married to AVR and I can’t imagine living life without him. Life in Germany wears me out, but I can’t imagine being here with anyone else!

Our ministry had Christmas Teas all over town on Saturday night. Christina, Kirstin, and I hosted a tea party at our house. It was really fun for me to have girls over here. I miss all of the times we invited people over in America. I think we need to have more parties! Plus, when our whole apartment is only lit by candles, you can’t really see the parts of it that are ugly! It looks like a warm, cozey flat - as the Germans call it.

There are always so many funny stories that I think of telling you….I’ll try to be more faithful at posting some of them. Today I had two girls here who wanted me to help them practice reading a story in English. They are studying to be teachers. (They’re so smart they’ll be teaching German kids all of their subjects in English!) It was really fun to teach them to use different intonations and fluxations (however you say that) in English. However, while we were doing this, I realized that I probably am more animated than most Americans when I speak….my pitch and tone goes up and down a lot. As they were trying to imitate me, I just had to laugh. I hope their teacher doesn’t give them a bad grade cuz they sound like cheerleader/sorority girls gone crazy…. :) Next time perhaps AVR should tutor them. He tends to be a bit more relaxed in his communication.

Also, there are these movies from India that we’ve been watching. They’re called “Bollywood” movies…kind of like West Side Story meets Disney’s High School Musical. Hillarious! On Friday night, there were people from Poland, France, Turkey, England, India, Germany and America watching a movie at our Campus office. It’s pretty amazing to be living life with people from all over the globe….please pray we represent Jesus well to students here!

And, I really wish you could visit our church with us. We go to an Anglican Church. It’s part of the Church of England. Our pastor, Robin, is from England and his wife, Joan, is from Ireland. There are people there from all over the world as well! It’s a small community. There are always amusing things that happen….we sometimes try to sing songs in a “round.” I always giggle a lot. Let’s just say it usually ends up that someone from the congregation has to come forward and get us going…Try to picture this at your church: Your pastor is trying to lead the music pretty much by himself, with an overhead projector with transparencies (like the 80s). Then, people yell out from the crowd that they can’t get the tune. Then someone has to jump up and lead us….Oh, I love it! They are a great bunch! They always make us feel so welcome! I even got to do a drama last week where I passed out Monopoly money to everyone! :) I’m excited for next week’s Christmas Eve service….the kids are acting out the Christmas story. It promises to be a good service!

Oh, and AVR just added that Will, from England, says “Cheerio!” when you leave church…good times here in Western Europe!

You might have to be here to experience the comedy in this stuff…but trust me, it’s funny. Next time I’ll tell you about the street clown that lives in our neighborhood! Let’s just say “See you later, Alligator” was blaring - in English - down our street today…

Missing you!

Sadee

Dec4th2006

Hellllloooooo out there!

Published
by
avr
1 year, 9 months ago
in Personal Updates
. Closed

Update!!…I added some pictures.

We’ve decided that we need to start updating this site more regularly! We’ll try to be more faithful with our updates! And, you’ll know who’s writing based on the number of exclamation points!!!! I, Sadee, use them lots….Aaron, not so much :)
We are doing okay. We are still adjusting to life in Germany. It’s been hard for us….we miss America a lot, especially the people we love and the comforts of home. I think the holidays make us more aware of the things we miss as well. Updates from the last month or so:

We had a great time at Aaron’s sister’s wedding. Jim and Andrea had a wonderful wedding celebration and it was soooo special for us to get to be a part of it!

Our adjustment back to Germany after being in South Dakota has been okay….We couldn’t use our heaters for quite awhile, but now we can! (What a challenge this apartment has been! We are thankful that we finally have hot water and heat!) We celebrated Thanksgiving with our team that we minister with. We even had turkey - which isn’t that common in Germany! I turned 30 on November 27th! I officially celebrated with the Queen Bees from Galesburg last July! I was the last one of our high school friends to turn 30 :)
I love to open presents so our team here bought me 30 things to open - lip gloss, nail polish, socks, etc. And then we got to play the game CLUE (my favorite game from the 80s!) and eat cheesecake! It was tons of fun!

This week we have some visitors from the States. They work with our ministry. They are here to encourage us in our ministry and with our team dynamics. We are praying that Jesus will encourage us deeply through their visit!

That’s the overall update…and boy is there lots more to say! We’ll try to tell you stories from our days and keep you in the loop that way….some future funny stories will include the clown that hangs out across the street from our apartment, our “flourescent” living room, our new Polish friends, and how the pastor of our church asked Aaron to dress up as “Father Christmas” or “Saint Nick”….I can’t remember what the Germans call him right now :) Stay tuned! Thanks for caring about us!

Love, The 30 Year Old Van Ruler - my husband is a young buck!